New Music Circle 2008-09 season to include concerts by Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, Morton Subotnick

Concerts by the 27-piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble and electronic music legend Morton Subotnick (pictured) will be among the highlights of New Music Circle's 2008-09 season, the fiftieth anniversary year for the venerable presenting organization.

Golia, who composes and improvises on multiple woodwind instruments, will kick off the NMC season with a performance on Saturday, September 27 at the Webster University Community Music School, 534 Garden Ave. NMC says they've "assembled a 27-piece group of top local and national talent for the concert. Large Ensemble compositions are based in the Jazz tradition and blend heavily notated contemporary chamber music with improvisation, and incorporate various extended instrumental techniques, 20th-century idioms, and world music concepts. Golia's music demands an exceptional group of dedicated musicians, adept at both reading and improvising, and at home in a wide variety of styles."

Subotnick comes to St. Louis on Saturday, November 22, when he'll perform "Until Spring Revisited," a composition involving electronic music and video, at the Mildred E. Bastian Performing Arts Center at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park, 5600 Oakland Ave. Subotnick, a pioneer in the development of electronic music and multimedia performance, first gained fame for his 1967 work "Silver Apples of the Moon" and has gone on to receive multiple Rockefeller Grants, the Guggenheim Grant, ASCAP’s John Cage Award, and many awards and accolades.

Also on NMC's season schedule:

* Percussionist/composer Rich O’Donnell, who will offer a multi-media performance called "WORDSDROW" on Saturday, October 18 at Satori, 3003 Locust.

* Electronic musician James Hegarty, who will present "Antithesis Reflex" on Friday, November 7 at Three Sinks Gallery, 8715 Big Bend Blvd.

* The twenty-second installment of "Circle/Cinema," which combines live improvised music with silent film, on Sunday, November 16 at the St. Louis Art Museum Auditorium. The screening will be presented in association with the Museum and the St. Louis International Film Festival, but there are no details yet on the specific film or musicians involved.

* Percussionist Gino Robair, who will perform "I, Norton" on Saturday, March 7, 2009 at the Mildred E. Bastian Performing Art Center. The piece "is based on the life of Joshua Norton, who on September 17, 1859 proclaimed, “at the request of the citizens of these United States, I declare myself Emperor,” and is described as "an improvised collage structure that combines conduction (using handcues), graphic scores, memory-based improvisational structures, and fully notated works.

* Video artist Van McElwee, who will collaborate with O'Donnell and others for a program on Saturday, April 18, 2009 at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium.

* Electronic musician and former St. Louisan Tom Hamilton, who will perform Saturday, May 2, 2009 at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand Blvd.

In addition, the NMC season will include four more events whose precise dates and, in some cases, locations, are yet to be announced. In May 2009, composer, pianist, and electronic musician Chris Brown and Guillermo Galindo will come to Laumeier Sculpture Park to perform "River of Voices," for which "the audience is instructed to bring portable radios to receive a live broadcast on one of four low-power FM frequencies. As participants move through the park, they become an animated sound system for the multichannel electronic music piece." The other three events will feature performance artist Kelsey LaPoint in December; Hegarty in February, 2009; and O’Donnell sometime in the spring of 2009.

Season tickets are $80 for general admission and $40 for students. For more information, visit New Music Circle's Web site.